Truthless in Gaza

Richard Landes over at Pajamas Media has given us an update on the al-Dura affair. This scandal is one of the more grotesque displays of media bias in recent history, a textbook example of how the mainstream media distorts (and in this case, fabricates) events to lionize the enemies of Western civilization.

The al-Dura case, which became a cause célèbre for the Arab world (and its Western lackeys), involved the staging in September 2000 of what appeared to be a merciless and drawn-out murder of a Palestinian Arab boy by Israeli troops in Gaza. Someone got a hold of footage that was not shown on TV—scenes that revealed the entire concoction in all its detail—and blew the whistle on the whole operation. Landes and his associates have worked tirelessly for several years to bring these shocking revelations to the attention of the public.

Anyone familiar with the intifadah knows that this choreographed hooey was standard operating procedure. But in the case of al-Dura, the counterfeiters were caught red-handed. It may very well be the most damning evidence thus far against “Pallywood,” the production, filming, and splicing of bogus incidents of Israeli brutality.

Western journalists have a long record of collaboration with the Arab propaganda machine. Let me point to just one example with which I am familiar from personal experience.

After the signing of the infamous Oslo Accords in 1993, the Western media was suppressing any news that would make the nascent Palestinian Authority look bad. This included a blackout on Arafat’s belligerent posturing to the Arab world, in Arabic. Despite the peace treaty signed on the White House lawn, Arafat and his lieutenants continued to speak to their people as if the war against Israel was at its peak. One would never know this, however, from reading Le Monde or watching ABC news. (Unfortunately, this was before the advent of the blogosphere.)

I was in Israel some time later, working as a freelance journalist. I picked up a rather unusual assignment. A team of film technicians and translators had made videos of some of Arafat’s Nazi-style, jihadesque speeches to the masses in Gaza. These chilling spectacles, which could make even the most hardened Arafat-watcher’s hair stand on end, were translated into Hebrew and English.

The team was looking for a native English speaker to present the videos to the Western media. I accepted the offer. At the outset, I was concerned that my personal safety might be endangered when the films were shown to a wide audience.

My fears were for naught. For several days, I visited with virtually the entire Western press corps in Israel: the New York Times, the BBC, Reuters, you name it. All of them courteously listened to my pitch. All of them tried to keep a poker face as they watched the video, but signs of shock expressed themselves in a rogue muscle twitch or bead of sweat. All of them responded at the end with some mumbo-jumbo such as “oh, that’s just what Arafat’s saying to his people; he has to do that to maintain credibility.”

Sure, I said to myself. That’s certainly what these journalists would say if I had shown them translations of Yitzhak Rabin making speeches in Hebrew calling for the Palestinian Arabs to be driven into the sea.

Not a single one of those media outlets ran the story. The silence was deafening. Little did I realize, at the time, that this entire affair—just like al-Dura—was one more link in the long chain of media promotion of all that is anti-Western.